Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

Anything with a ghost.

Edited by jamespolk on Oct 22nd 2018 at 5:34:17 AM

The Haunting (1963) would beg to differ (though admittedly we don't see any ghost).

Edited by Nithael on Oct 23rd 2018 at 11:38:31 AM

I love that movie.

I've recorded a couple of the TCM horror films, namely ones I haven't seen. Just watched the 1959 version of The Mummy. They make Christopher Lee a pretty fast-moving mummy, to be sure. Not sure how I feel about putting Christopher Lee in a movie and not letting him talk but I guess a talking mummy would just be silly.

In what is for me at least deeply depressing news, Filmstruck is shutting down forever on Nov. 29, 2018. Gotta watch as many Criterion films as I can.

What?! But that was the only good streaming service for classic films! Even if I never was able to get it, I'm disappointed. Netflix's classic film offers are either dire or non-existent.

Killed by the AT&T merger.

I wonder when the bell will toll for Turner Classic Movies.

Told you that this was the merger everyone should pay attention to.

I think everybody was paying attention to it.

Oh god, AT & T doesn't exist up here, but I've only heard bad things about it. Noooo, please don't ruin TCM.

I'm just talking out of my ass about TCM, haven't read a word in the press to that effect, but if AT&T is killing Filmstruck it would seem logical to kill TCM too.

Here is a thoroughly depressing essay about how the loss of Filmstruck is a symbol of the death of film heritage and knowledge, and how all culture is turning into nothing but the franchises that the media conglomerates throw at us.

I might have to look into subscribing to Netflix's DVD service. It's still a thing!

I could have told you that this was the way streaming was going to go. I could have told you that you should trust in physical media, because it never goes away once you've bought it. But no one asked, did they?

Needless to say, streaming is going to get worse. Most companies haven't even launched their own streaming services yet, and piracy is starting to rise again after years of decline. Just see how bad it'll get in a few years...

But if you're a fan of classic film and you want to do it the legal way, frankly, now's the time to start investing in physical media. Get copies of your own. Maybe even become a collector. (I've been collecting video tapes for years and have never felt the need to be ashamed of it.)

There's also Kanopy, but neither my library nor any library close to me seems to offer it. Shit, I'd pay for that if there were any pay option for a membership.

Edited by jamespolk on Oct 26th 2018 at 4:26:09 AM

I've never felt so proud of my DVD/Bluray collection (I've also kept my old VHS tapes and still have a VHS player but these things really wear down. Like cassettes, they were a sucky medium). I've always loved physical media and being able to put it on a shelf and watch it whenever I wanted without a monthly subscription attached. But, damn, streaming is convenient. I want to watch movies on the bus sometimes...

I was pretty pissed the other day that I couldn't find a Kino copy of Lucky Star but the old You Tube had it...

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Oct 26th 2018 at 12:33:59 PM

On the one hand, physical media has obvious advantages. You can give it away. You can sell it. You can donate it. It's yours, and nothing streaming or downloaded is yours.

On the other hand, my Filmstruck subscription was $100/year while one Criterion DVD will set me back $30-40. Eh, time to watch the last two Setsuko Hara films I had saved before they go away forever.

I was in a bookstore today, and they had a bunch of Criterion DVD. I picked up My Winnipeg and they wanted $40 for it. I just watched My Winnipeg very recently on Filmstruck.

Goddammit.

Anyway, made a page for a Jean Harlow film called Suzy. It's not her best but Cary Grant is in it and they sure are charming together.

EDIT: That'll be the last article about a Hollywood classic film that I make over the next month or so as I struggle to watch as many Criterion titles as I can. This is still pissing me off.

Edited by jamespolk on Oct 28th 2018 at 11:18:59 AM

Watched Within Our Gates, a 1920 film notable for being the earliest surviving film by an African-American director. The film surprised me by being very direct about its message about race relations in the United States at the time (I would've guessed that a movie that overtly critical of the status quo would not have been able to be released). I've read that it was kind of a repudiation of D. W. Griffith's The Birth Of A Nation, and—yeah, I can see it. The story is nothing spectacular, and it's told somewhat oddly, but the historical context makes it an interesting watch.

Within Our Gates is an odd movie. Sometimes it is very creaky and amateurishly didactic. Sometimes it has moments of shocking power, like the lynching and the guilt-ridden Uncle Tom preacher. Certainly light-years ahead of any other movie made about race for the next 40-odd years.

Made a work page for an Ozu film, Late Autumn with Setsuko Hara. Honestly, between the very similar titles and the very similar themes, sometimes I have problems telling Ozu films apart.

Edited by jamespolk on Oct 28th 2018 at 7:07:35 AM

Exploiting my Filmstruck subscription while I still can, made another page for an Ozu film: The End of Summer.

Hold on to your hats: in this movie, Setsuko Hara is pressured to get married.

I think it may be a mistake for me to watch this many Ozu films in a row.

Continuing my last-minute march through the Criterion Collection. Watched Journey to Italy, one of the movies Ingrid Bergman made with Roberto Rossellini during the period when she had been exiled from Hollywood for being naughty.

She and George Sanders play a married couple who go to Naples to sell a house they just inherited, and discover that they don't like each other very much. I rather liked it. So many of Bergman's films have her as a glamorous queen; it was interesting to see her here as a wife overcome with ennui. There's also a ton of scenes shot in and around scenic Naples, including a Real Life excavation of two plaster casts of corpses at Pompeii.

Yes, still marching through the Criterion Collection while my DVR starts to fill up with stuff from TCM.

The Music Room, which I guess is the most famous film made by Satyajit Ray that's not part of the Apu Trilogy. This one's about an Old Money Impoverished Patrician Bengali landlord who keeps spending money just to keep up appearances even as he sinks into penury, eventually selling off furniture and silverware. Like Charles Foster Kane if Kane had actually gone broke and had to sell off all the crap in Xanadu. It's a pretty interesting tale of self-destructiveness and Honor Before Reason. The guy pretty much makes his own bed, but in a strange way his sense of dignity is still admirable.

No one else is commenting. Where are you people?

Continuing my march through the Criterion Collection in the 25 days I have left, as my DVR storage creeps over 70%. The latest thing I watched is Torment, a 1944 film from Sweden that happens to be the first credit of Ingmar Bergman (he wrote the screenplay).

I liked it better than a lot of mature Bergman films, honestly; no one stabs herself in the vagina with a shard of glass, and there are no conversations about whether God exists as the camera lingers over a frozen lake. No, it's an interesting little movie about a dude of late high school age who is victimized by an evil, heartless Sadist Teacher—think Severus Snape without any of the redeeming qualities. The boy likes to talk with the good-looking girl who works as a cashier at the drug store. One day he's walking downtown and he sees the girl, so drunk she can barely stand. Turns out she is Drowning My Sorrows because she's being victimized by an evil man. The boy and the hot girl become lovers.

You can probably guess who the evil mystery man is.

Also the film debut of Mai Zetterling as the hot cashier; I'd never heard of her before but it turns out she became a film director herself, of some renown.

I recently rewatched El Santo and the Vampire Women (1962), the Mexican B-movie classic of Lucha cinema (I'm writing a master's on it). Despite all the surreal corny stuff (it's a goddamn Luchador squaring off against ye olde gothic vampires), pretty solid cinematography and gorgeous use of black-and-white in some scenes.

Or, if you watch it in English, Samson Vs The Vampire Women - as it was known on MST 3 K.

Distributed in English by the great K. Gordon Murray, a man who brought tons of Mexican horror films and kiddie films - which were equally as terrifying - to America.

Edited by Aldo930 on Nov 4th 2018 at 12:30:18 PM

I watched Bette Davis in A Stolen Life. Bette has a Duel Role of twin sisters: Pat and Kate Bosworth. Essentially, Kate is the sweet/innocent, Tom Boy who's dating Glenn Ford. She's kind of dull but nice enough. Pat, in turn, is a sexy harlot of 1940s variety who steals her twin sister's boyfriend, marries him, and sexes it up with other dudes. Like any 1940s slut with a capital "S" Pat is killed in a boating accident, and Kate "steals" her life when everyone mistakes her as Pat.

This is a sexist movie (I gotta point that out), but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a damn enjoyable melodrama.

The Kate is mistaken for Pat thing is a stretch not because they're twins (obviously) but because she somehow manages to get her sister's wedding ring. I also imagine that no adult female identical twins in the world would ever have their hair/makeup arranged in the same way. Like, they would never want to be mistaken for each other, right?

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Nov 4th 2018 at 3:41:21 AM